It’s alive! It’s ALIVE!

The hot topic of the moment is the death of Osama Bin Laden. I despise posting about politics, world events and current news because everyone and their mother does nowadays but I find it mildly amusing that I first heard about it via social media (ie Facebook) rather than press media. I’ve often thought social media would be the death knell of journalism. While many news outlets have embraced social media, I don’t they they fully realize the ramifications. I think the term “Breaking News” will become kind of forgotten in the near future. Journalists will have to start protecting their sources and leads with an unprecedented level of security if they ever hope to have an exclusive. The way things can go viral on the Internet is baffling. Information spreads like wildfire – much quicker than television so if journalism ever hopes to survive it has to adapt accordingly. For the most part it has. Much better than the music industry did, that’s for sure.

I think back to the late 90’s when MP3 technology got mixed together with the World Wide Web. It was the greatest combination since chocolate and peanut butter. MP3 downloads rocked the music industry. They weren’t ready for it and never anticipated its impact in the long run. Some musicians saw it as a Godsend having their previously unreleasable(?) work suddenly opened up to a global audience. It opened doors and put people’s names out there. Unfortunately there were those whose names we do not speak lest we be hit with a lawsuit for speaking the truth that saw it as a gross violation of their sovereignty. I can understand their point of view to an extent but when an artist puts out a 17 track CD – 15 of which are garbage songs – who’s getting robbed? Who was paying $20 bucks for one or two songs? Who was being treated unfairly? Thankfully in the mid 2000’s pay-per-song became a resolution that both sides could gladly agree with. The music industry is still licking its wounds from their gross underestimation of the power of the Internet.

I’m not a hippie. I’m a fan of technology and make a living off it like millions of others. My bone of contention lies in our utter dependence on it right now. It already killed the classic library experience. Those of you who are old enough to remember, think back to when you were in grade school and had to do reports or research something. There wasn’t a one-click information sewer that you could extract what you needed from. You had to actually go to a building that stored many books that you could either read there or “rent” for a while. It saddens me that many children don’t even know the true purpose of a library. They see it as a place for free WiFi and that’s what’s scary. I’ve said it time and time again, one day everything will crash. It doesn’t even have to be a permanent thing. Just a week. A day. Heck, even an hour. Imagine an hour where global Internet communication and access is unavailable. Imagine all of the businesses, services and telecommunications that would crumble. It’s not as outlandish as you may think and it’s a concept that many choose to brush to the wayside rather than give it a second thought.

Between the 17th and the 19th of April hackers broke into the Playstation and Qriocity Networks and stole the account information of literally millions of people. Passwords, account names, personal data and even rumored credit card information were all exposed and assumed stolen. The intrusion disrupted service for the past couple of weeks, caused a public relations nightmare for Sony and is probably costing them millions in damage control. This was just a gaming and a media network affected. Imagine if something far more expansive were to happen to vital network. What then? I don’t mean to come off like CNN with a Fear and Propaganda campaign, but it is food for thought.

No one ever thinks about anything until it happens.

That’s why I’m stoked for when we go post-apocalyptic. I’ve been planning for that for a long time now. 😀

That’s actually a great idea. Just think about how you feel when your system crashes out of the blue and you end up losing data. That’ll propmpt you to start printing out those blog entries sooner rather than later.

Have to wonder of the fate of libraries when cuts are being made all over. As it stands, my sons university still has real libraries, but he has online access to every bit of it. he got a break during the fall semester and did research for a paper sitting on the back porch.

There’s a lot to be said for easy access to knowledge and info, but not sure we should put all our eggs in the new basket.

Ok CNN….just kidding. It’s crazy if you sit and think about the potential damage. We have been affected by the Sony network being hacked and my oldest isn’t the happiest of people considering he’s been missing his Black Ops online play. I can’t imagine the dollars being invested into the security breach. Ugh.

They’ve hit rough patches before that they’ve had to recover from so I’m sure they’ll figure something out. They’re already distributing free PSN Plus to everyone for a month when they come back online plus free downloads. It’s better than a kick in the pants I say.